A brief coaching excerpt (speaker: Bill Gallagher) advising listeners—when pitching, selling, hiring, fundraising, or proposing—to stop expecting and worrying about hearing 'no.' The speaker explains that expecting 'no' reduces enthusiasm and sabotages communication; instead, notice and set fear aside, reframe toward reasons the other person might say 'yes', highlight mutual wins, and, if fear is deep, seek additional resourcing or therapy.
Well, we spoke last time about the need to get more yeses. And whether you're pitching, selling, hiring, proposing, like whatever it is, raising money, you need to hear yes way more often. And when you hear yes, and when it's easy, life is easier, it's more enjoyable. Scaling up is a more enjoyable process. It doesn't have to suck so bad. And we want you to get better at that. So in addition to listening and thinking about what the other person wants, there is a couple other things that get in the way. Here's a big one. When you go in worrying about no, your whole focus is off. You expect no. You actually speak in a less exciting way. If I'm expecting a no from the other person embracing, I'm defensive, I'm worried about the no. I will actually say what I have to say, what I'm excited about, otherwise excited about, and I'll diminish it, I'll suppress it, I'll be less enthusiastic about it, I'll disconnect it. I won't say it in a way that it comes across to you as great fun and cool in your world. I will actually sabotage the whole thing before it's even finished out of my mouth. So if you're expecting no, you need to figure out how to set that no aside and speculate on why they might say yes and speak to the yes. You have to recognize that your no, your negativity, your fear, fear about getting a no is getting in the way of your ever getting yes. So notice the fear, acknowledge the fear, move through the fear like you have the fear. Just set the fear aside and now say okay. And why might they be interested? What could be a win for them as well as for me, and start to move back past that fear. If the fear is really deep, then maybe you need some other kind of, I don't know, something else to sort. Some other kind of resourcing, some therapy, something to get you sorted out, deal with your fear before you go and try to get yes to whatever you want to propose and shoot yourself in the foot with that. So get your worries about no out of the way so that you can actually create a compelling, engaging pitch proposal to someone. Hope that's helpful. We'll talk to you again next time.
